Summer of 77

I turned twelve in the summer of 1977. I best remember that as the summer I was raped, which had a significant impact on my life.

I recently realized more than 47 years after the fact -- because I'm quick like that -- it was a watershed moment in my life for other reasons and exactly why.

Over the years, I pieced together the fact that my dad had money when he met my mom, she was gorgeous and smart and wanted a career and he talked her into marrying him on the promise he would always take good care of her.

When they met, he told her "No wife of mine will ever work" which sounds like misogynistic assholery to a lot of people today but what he was telling her was "I'm a good provider and will take good care of you."

Over time, it gradually, insidiously turned into misogynistic assholery because he didn't let her accept a part-time job with a seamstress when I, their youngest child, turned five and started school. Seven years later, mom created a financial crisis unnecessarily, informed my father "You don't make enough money to back that up (that no wife of mine will ever work)" and began working outside the home for pay.

When they met, he wanted four kids and she told him "You'll be lucky if you get two out of me." Her second pregnancy was rough and she was informed she couldn't have more kids. I'm number three but it took her nearly four years of unprotected sex to get pregnant with me, so they weren't entirely wrong that something was messed up by that pregnancy.

When I was twelve, she turned up pregnant again and was extremely sick. Doctors were willing to give her an abortion to save her life.

She checked into the hospital and after she checked in, dad declined to sign the paperwork to let her have the abortion. He still wanted that fourth child even if it cost him the life of his wife.

The law had recently changed in Georgia and she no longer actually needed her husband's permission, so she signed the papers herself and had the abortion.

And then afterwards I guess as promptly as possible went and arranged an apartment for my sister at college, a bunch of new furniture for my sister's apartment, GAVE away her own old living room set to deny my sister's request for hand-me-down furniture and also bought herself new living room furniture that she bitched about for years as ugly because she didn't have enough money to adequately cover everything and ALSO bought my sister a car.

My mom didn't have a driver's license when she married my dad. He used to take the wheels off the car and put it on blocks when he went to the field for weeks at a time. She went to driving school behind his back while he was gone to get her first license.

She had a one woman liberation movement that summer and made damn sure my sister felt entitled to live independently like a man.

I guess dad declining to sign the papers was her nope moment and she was done politely putting up with his shit and then spent years making sure there were highly visible examples she could point to of all her disappointments in him while she loudly bitched about them, including "When I married you, I HAD a maid. Now I AM the maid."

So her daughters had some hope of getting a clue before it was too late for them to do anything about this societal pattern that routinely shafts good women who play by the rules.